Labor

February 19, 2015

Part 1: What To Do When More People Are Old

As population shifts, developed nations will have redistribution decisions as the proportion of the non-working aged and the young need more labor income.

February 13, 2015

Pondering the Bunker Hill Theory of Inflation

As the source of monetary policy, the Federal Reserve has to decide if interest rates should rise when inflation is low but a jobs recovery has begun.

February 9, 2015

One Reason We Can’t Believe in Innate Talent

Limiting potential economic growth, the myth of innate talent in disciplines like philosophy diminishes the pool of female and Afro-American human capital.

January 27, 2015

The Reason It Can Be Tough to Cross the Street

Called the American Dream, the income mobility that lifts a child beyond a parent's poverty can depend on a community's characteristics.

January 20, 2015

How Chocolate Chip Cookies Explain Why We Save Less

Explained by behavioral economics, we save relatively little for retirement because of intertemporal selfishness and seeing our future selves as strangers.

January 15, 2015

A Mystery: Trying to Find the Middle Class

While everyone refers to the middle class and most of us say we are in the middle class, few know the characteristics of the group to which they refer.

January 9, 2015

How Men Act When They Outnumber Women

How gender ratios in the U.S. and China affect men's financial behavior can be explained with supply and demand and behavioral economics from Gary Becker.

January 8, 2015

Understanding a New Tax Issue

With the House requiring dynamic scoring of tax legislation from the CBO, the bigger tax debate resurfaces on how much redistribution and spending.

December 16, 2014

Why Academy Award Winners Might Live Longer

Relating income inequality to the stress felt by low status Bolivian Tsimane men and academy award losers, researchers said that stress that harms health.

November 27, 2014

A Bigger (Thanksgiving) Pie or Equal Slices?

Increasing income inequality by moving from communal farming to individual plots, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford changed income redistribution.

November 25, 2014

What An Unemployment Rate Does Not Tell You

A single statistic like the unemployment rate for Japan, the European Union and the U.S. can be misleading until we look more closely at what it represents.

October 27, 2014

The Reason Norway Said No to the Olympics

Because host countries for the Olympics and World Cup spend too much on new stadiums, their subsequent return on investment (ROI) is usually inadequate.